Tuesday, 19 July 2016

Istanbul

One of the more extraordinary aspects of old Muslim cities is the way they living co-exist with the dead. Cemeteries are a feature of all old towns from Istanbul to Rabat to Cairo. It isn't always obvious because old Jewish cemeteries are sometimes hidden behind walls as they are at Tangier and Marrakech (and they are in Britain) but Christian and Jewish graves are still there. Frank Brangwyn's view of Istanbul from one of the cemetries at Uskudar across the Bosphorus is one of his most affecting prints. It comes from Yoshijiro Urushibara's Ten woodcuts published in 1924 and less than ten years after the defeat inflicted on the allied armies by Ottoman forces on the Gallipoli peninsula early in 1916 after a year of fighting. (The man with the moustache and the field glasses in the photograph below is Mustafa Kemal, later first president of the Turkish Republic, showing the battlefield to a delegation of writers).

Brangwyn wasn't against the war. One of the eighty propaganda posters he produced so enraged Kaiser Wilhelm, Brangwyn may well have been in danger if Germany and their Ottoman allies had won. What Urushibara's attitude was, I do not know, but he was a nigh-on perfect collaborator with the British artist. Brangwyn could be hackneyed, trite and unsubtle but Urushibara's printing methods often added nuances that were beyond Brangwyn and no more so than here with his sympathetic use of green.

Oskar Laske must have been in Istanbul around about 1910 or before because Der wunderbare Fischzug was made between 1911 and 1914. It may not look like Istanbul or anywhere near there but, although the subject comes from the New testament, the etching shows the kind of tower used by Turkish fishermen along the shore of the Golden Horn and the Bosphorous. This print turned up in excellent condition on British ebay some years ago and the only person who wanted it was me. I can tell you the image above doesn't do Laske's work any justice. I include one of his watercolours of the city.

What I like about Emma Bormann's view of Istanbul (below) is the way it avoids the common western depiction of the oriental city as a warren of narrow streets teaming with people. It often is, but that isn't the point! And so far as I'm concerned, the Orient begins at Budapest. And in case you don't believe me, keep in mind the way someone once described Naples: 'The only oriental city without a European quarter'.

6 comments:

While I have no doubt that Urushibara made valuable contributions in the process of producing woodblock prints for Brangwyn, his "sympathetic use of green" would have been something that originated with Brangwyn himself. Either Urushibara would be working to reproduce the colors already present in one of Brangwyn's paintings or, as I suspect in this case, Brangwyn would have hand-colored one of Urushibara's keyblock prints to let Uruhibara know precisely what colors Brangwyn intended.

More is known about Urushibara's working relationship with Frank Brangwyn than with any of the other artists that Urushibara worked with. Based on a draft that I have reviewed of the forthcoming catalog raisonne of Urushibara's prints that Hilary Chapman and Brangwyn expert Libby Horner are currently working on, I can safely say that it will shed considerable light on this question. For my own part, I own a couple of Urushibara works-in-progress with hand-coloring by Brangwyn and have seen images of several other similar pieces with his hand-coloring or color notations to Urushibara.

Oskar Laske was a mentor of Emma Bormann's. They both participated in a tour of Sicily and Tunisia organized by the University of Vienna in 1913. Like Laske, she liked to view cities, streets, and crowds from above, and she typically climbed a hill or tower when she came to a new city.

This print of Istanbul, and many others, are included in a new book, just published, about her: "The Art of Emma Bormann." It is available on Amazon U.S., and for those in Europe and the UK, it should be available soon on the Amazon Germany website.

Very interesting, Andreas, thank you. I didn't know that about Laske and Bormann and it makes a lot of sense. Intriguing also because they were such different artists, in simple terms one analytical the other quirky.

I know Bormann had an academic post but what were Laske's connections with the university? I think you have given Modern Printmakers something entertaining to work on here.

Emma Bormann's two main mentors were Laske and the painter and etcher Ludwig Michalek. Laske studied architecture in Vienna (his father was an architect) and worked in that field but eventually became an artist. I don't know whether he had any direct professional connection to the University.

The art historian Erika Tietze-Conrat wrote a small book about Laske in 1921. It's now in the public domain and available on Google books. One interesting point she makes is to note the influence of Pieter Bruegel the Elder on some of Laske's compositions which have high horizons and many small figures. There's no doubt that Laske and Bormann both spent many hours at the Vienna art museum (the Kunsthistorisches Museum), where there are many famous Bruegel paintings. They would have known these paintings well, studied them, and been influenced by them. Bruegel might also have inspired both these artists' tendency toward caricature in how they portray human figures (of course not in the examples here, but elsewhere).

An interesting aside: Erika Tietze-Conrat and her husband Hans Tietze, both art historians, were painted by Oskar Kokoschka. The portrait is now in the Museum of Modern Art, New York. In the picture they hold their hands out in front of them, and there's a wonderfully nervous energy.